At least ten people are feared to have died after two high-speed trains collided in the province of Toledo in Spain on Wednesday morning, and local authorities have warned that the number of casualties is expected to rise. Officials have expressed growing concern about a «major tragedy», and the final toll has not yet been confirmed.
The trains involved are understood to be an Iryo service, numbered 7076, carrying 146 passengers and one baby, and an AVE service, numbered 2080, carrying 397 passengers. That puts 544 people in total on board the two trains. Spain's rail system operator ADIF said the crash happened on Wednesday morning in the province of Toledo, and the affected trains were operating on the high-speed network.
The incident comes less than a year after a similar crash in Adamuz, in the province of Córdoba, which killed 46 people and injured 152 in January this year. That earlier accident drew close public attention to the safety of a network that is widely regarded as one of the most extensive in the world. Spain's high-speed railway is the largest in Europe and the second biggest in the world after China, carrying 25 million passengers in 2024.
Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said he was «shocked» by the accident. Transport Minister Óscar Puente has been working at the emergency control centre since 9.40am local time, trying to gather all available information about what happened. In a brief initial statement he said he had been in the control centre «orying to obtain all possible information about what happened», and he did not yet provide details on the cause of the collision.
The scale of the disaster means that rescue and recovery work is likely to continue for some time, with emergency services and officials expected to release further figures as the situation is assessed. Relatives of passengers travelling on both services are likely to be seeking news, and the authorities have yet to set out how information about the injured and missing will be shared.
Given the proximity of the Adamuz accident, questions about how the two incidents compare, and about the safety measures in place on Spain's high-speed lines, are likely to feature in the coming days. No official explanation for the collision had been published at the time of reporting, and the details of how the two trains came into contact remain unconfirmed.
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